Recycled Craft

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Herbal honey can be used to treat common ailments or simply for the pleasure of its wonderful flavor.

If you enjoy herbs and honey, infusing your honey with herbs will give you the best of both worlds. Honey and herbs are both well known for their natural medicinal value. Honey is anti-bacterial, prevents infection and inflammation, and soothes a sore throat. Herbs have individual medicinal benefits. Herbal honey can be used to treat common ailments or simply for the pleasure of its wonderful flavor. It is best to use raw honey in your herbal infusion because raw honey is richer in enzymes, as the heat from pasteurization destroys them, as well as some of the active antibacterial ingredients.

To Make Herbal Honey

Use 1 tablespoon of fresh herbs, or half a teaspoon of dried herbs for every 2 cups of honey.

If the herbs are fresh, grind them well to aid in the infusion.

Tie the herbs in cheesecloth.

In a pot, warm the honey and herbs. It is important not to heat the honey too much or the enzymes will be destroyed. Simply warm the honey to a temperature well below 115 degrees.

Put the honey and the herbs into a large canning jar with a tight fitting lid.

Let the honey sit in at room temperature in a dark place for at least one week.

Heat the honey just to warm and press the liquid out of the herbs.

Tips for Making Herbal Honey:

You can also chop the herbs finely and leave the herbs in the honey.

Using more herbs will shorten the amount of time it takes to infuse the honey.

Allowing the herbs to infuse into the honey longer will strengthen the medicinal properties of the herbal honey.

We used the Shrink It! Jewelry Baking Kit by ArtSkills. We got it at Dollar General just before
Christmas on sale and it was only a dollar or two.

The kit comes with the plastic shrinky dink pictures with a paper type coating on them that was not there when I was a kid in the 70s. The white paper coating makes it easier to color them. Have the kids use the colored pencils that come in the kit to color the pictures. Then have them cut out the pictures and punch a hole to put the loops through and string them on necklaces, key chains, jewelry, hair clips, or anything they wish. Skills developed include coloring, cutting, and crafting jewelry. It's a great craft for kids that are practicing these skills or older girls that want to make their own jewelry. It's inexpensive too.

The kit comes with parchment paper to line the pan and keep it from sticking. Heat the oven to 350 degrees and place the pan with the paper lining and shrink its in the oven for 1 minute. The final shrink its come out only about 1/10th the size of the original.

If you've never made a hat on the Knifty Knitter looms, this is a good pattern to get started. It teaches the basic method of making a hat. The loom that you use to make this hat will depend on the size hat you want. I knit hats for myself and my teens on the green loom. Some adults prefer to use the yellow loom for a bigger hat.

Using 2 worsted weight yarns (typical yarn weight) held together as one yarn, wrap the loom one time around. If you haven't e wrapped before, here is a video to get you started.

Push the first row down to the bottom of the pegs and wrap a second row. As you wrap be sure to wrap loosely! Wrapping too tight will make the next step difficult.

Knit! You create knit by using the hook that came with your Knifty Knitter looms to pull the bottom loop up and over the loop above it, then off the peg. Do this with all the pegs until you have only one loop left on each peg.

Remove the knit from the loom by cutting a one foot tail of the working yarn. Thread the end through a yarn needle and sew through each loop with a yarn needle. In this step you want to be sure that you go the same direction that you've been working, so as not to reverse the direction of the yarn.

When you have the loops off the pegs, pull the yarn tight to cinch the knit together. This is the top of the hat. The bottom of the hat will naturally roll.

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

1. Using one strand each of the 2 black yarns, wrap all of the pegs and knit 7 rows. Put the first row back up and over the pegs as if you were making a brim. Knit the stitches over.

2. Switch to the yellow yarn, but do not cut the black yarns. Using 2 strands of the yellow yarn, knit 4 rows.

3. Switch back to the black yarns, but do not cut the yellow yarn. Knit 7 rows using the black yarns.

4. Reach inside of the loom and pull the first row of the black knitting up and over the pegs, as if you were making a brim. Knit this row over.

5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 two more times. This makes 4 bumps, or ridges.

6. Knit 10 rows using the yellow yarn.

7. Using a yarn needle and a 14" piece of yarn, take the yarn loops from the pegs. Gather the two ends of your sewing yarn together and tie them in a square knot. (This process is described in detail in the basic hat instructions in the round loom packaging.)

Round Knifty Knitter Loom (Various sizes depending on the age and head size)

The hat is knitted from the top down. Ewrap all the odd number pegs: 1, 3, 5, 7, etc. Knit using the one over one stitch (pull one loop over one loop).

Using a second yarn color, ewrap the even number pegs: 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. Knit using the one over one stitch.

Continue with steps 1 and 2 until the knit is 7 inches long. Always wrap the pegs with the same color used in the previous row.

Using the color that you would like for the brim of the hat, create a ribbed brim by alternating ewrap and purl as you knit around the loom for 10 rows.

Remove the hat from the loom by loosely crocheting once through each stitch as you remove it from the loom. Add a loose chain stitch between each of the loops.

Sew through each loop at the top of the knit to pull closed the top of the hat.

As an alternative method, Jeannette also reversed the pattern knitting it from bottom to top. This prevented the brim from becoming too tight at the cast off. Here is the version of the hat knitted from bottom to top.